1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telephony systems such as those using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In particular, the present invention relates to simulating an inbound or outbound communication.
2. Description of the Background Art
Many businesses today have call centers systems that perform various functions. For example, a call center can handle customer services calls, make sales calls, etc. Communications are received at the call center. Sometimes these communications are terminated before a call center agent responds to the communication. For example, the call center is a customer service center that helps customers (i.e., third-party users of the call center system) with problems related to products or services sold by the business that runs the call center. A customer makes a telephone call to the customer service center. Before a customer service agent is able to take the customer's call, the customer hangs up. This is referred to herein as a “terminated communication.” A terminated communication includes, among other things, telephone calls to the call center that are terminated (e.g., customer hangs up, mobile phone service disconnects, etc.), chat sessions to the call center that are terminated (e.g., loss of bandwidth, customer terminated chat session, etc.), etc. Existing call center systems have numerous problems dealing with terminated communications.
First, the call center wants to respond to all users who call the call center, including those that experience a terminated communication. However, existing call center systems do not provide a way to reconnect with users who have experienced a terminated communication.
Second, the call center wants to be responsive to various types of terminated communications received at the call center, including telephone calls, chats and emails. However, existing call center systems do not provide a way to reconnect with users who have experienced a terminated communication using these various different communication types.
Third, existing call center systems do not provide a familiar interface for reconnecting with users that have experienced a terminated communication.